Editorial Policy

Authorship follows ICMJE guidelines: all listed authors must have made substantial intellectual contributions.

Authors are required to provide an honest account of authorship, ensuring that each listed author meets the authorship criteria to ensure transparency and credit to those who have substantially contributed to the work.

Failure to comply with these requirements is considered a form of research misconduct. Of particular concern are:

• Ghost authorship: where an author(s) has substantially contributed to the work but has not been given credit. This also affects transparency, as any competing interests related to a ‘ghost author’ will not be declared.
• Gift authorship: where a listed author(s) has not contributed substantially, or at all, to the published work.
• Authorship for sale: where authors have ‘sold’ an author spot/position on a paper, or where a researcher has ‘bought’ an authorship spot/position on a paper.

Journal of Inclusive Development will not charge any Article Processing Charges (APC) for manuscript submission.

Editors will ensure confidential handling of article manuscripts. No details will be disclosed to anyone except the peer reviewers without permission from the author. For articles, the review will be double-anonymized.

Editors will ensure that all those conducting peer review on behalf of the journal understand and adhere to the confidentiality requirements of the peer review process.

A conflict of interest can occur when you, your employer, or your sponsor has a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations or with the people working with them that could influence your research.

Please include a relevant disclosure statement with the text of your article. You can do this in conjunction with any acknowledgments and details of funders.

For Conflict of Interest Policy, please visit https://joidonline.com/index.php/joid/conflict-of-interest-statement.

If no competing interests are disclosed, the following statement will be published:

“No potential competing interest was reported by the author(s).”

Editors and reviewers will recuse themselves from any involvement with submissions in which they have a significant competing interest, the nature of which is likely to affect their ability to provide a fair and balanced assessment.

The Journal of Inclusive Development will make the articles available on an open-access basis, allowing broad access and re-use according to the author’s licensing selections. The JID will also validate, produce, disseminate, and act as a steward in the long-term curation of the article, including managing any updates or changes to it, so that readers can have confidence that the version they are viewing is the latest version of record.

The author(s) (or copyright owner, if different) will sign an author publishing agreement in which they retain copyright and give the Journal of Inclusive Development the right to publish the Version of Record of the article.

The agreement incorporates only one type of Creative Commons license for the author, which will dictate what others can do with the article once it has been published:

Attribution-Non-commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND), where others can download the work and share it as long as they credit the author for the original creation, but they cannot change it in any way or use it commercially.

The corrections policy outlines when we will make corrections to a published journal article and when a retraction may be considered.

Sometimes, after an article has been published, it may be necessary to make a change to the Version of Record. This change will be made after careful consideration by the journal’s editorial team to make sure any necessary changes are made in accordance with both JID policies and guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Aside from cases where a minor error is concerned, any necessary changes will be accompanied by a post-publication notice, which will be permanently linked to the original article.

These changes can take the form of a Correction notice, an Expression of Concern, a Retraction, and, in rare circumstances, a Removal.

It is essential that all data is accurate and representative of your research. The journal's editorial board will evaluate cases of data fabrication/falsification.

Research data can take many forms, but it is essentially the underlying evidence on which the claims in your publication rely.

Sharing these data publicly helps to maximize the discoverability and impact of your research. It also improves the robustness of the research process, supporting validation, research transparency, reproducibility, and replicability of results. Data sharing is a requirement to make data available to everyone.

A data availability statement (refer to section 13) tells the reader where the research data associated with a paper is available and under what conditions it can be accessed. They also include links (where applicable) to the data set.

The Journal of Inclusive Development cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions and is not liable for any loss or damage arising from the use or misuse of the published content.

Authors are required to declare upon submission that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere. As such, the detection of a duplicate submission or publication is typically considered to be a deliberate act.

Authors who wish to submit secondary publications (e.g., an article translated into English) must seek permission from the publisher and copyright holder of the original article and must inform the Editor of the receiving journal about the history of the original article, in accordance with ICMJE guidance.

Authors of secondary publications that have been translated into English must make it clear to readers that the article is a translated version and must include a citation to the original article.

Ethical, timely, and effective peer review is fundamental to a journal, and the editor is responsible for managing and assuring the integrity of the peer review process.

Editorial Process

• All manuscripts will be assigned a number upon receipt.
• All manuscripts will be checked via PDS software upon receipt.
• The editorial board will first review the submitted articles for their suitability within the Journal’s scope. If deemed suitable, the qualified articles will be reviewed by two anonymous external domain experts, as is the norm for a double-anonymized peer-reviewed journal.
• Papers deemed unsuitable will not be accepted.
• Both review reports will be considered when deciding whether to accept an article without revision, with revision, or to reject it.
• The ultimate responsibility for acceptance or rejection will lie with the editorial board.
• The first decision will be communicated to the author(s) in 6–8 weeks.

An editor will:

• Ensure that a journal’s aims and scope are kept up-to-date.
• Give unbiased consideration to each manuscript submitted and judge each on its merits, without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, gender, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
• Comply with and uphold the journal’s peer review policy and ensure that reviewers’ identities are protected.
• Ensure that rigorous peer review is conducted on each article, where detailed and constructive peer review reports have been obtained from at least two independent peer reviewers.
• Respect and maintain confidentiality throughout the peer review process.
• Maintain and ensure the integrity of the peer review process.
• Not set barriers to submission or publication other than the quality of the work.
• Confidently use the submission and peer review system provided by JID to ensure all submissions can be tracked and managed.
• Ensure peer review and editorial decision processes are auditable by uploading peer review reports via the peer review system or by storing digital copies securely.
• Ensure that any editorial board members or other members of the editorial team involved in the peer-review process work ethically, promptly, and effectively.
• Provide guidance for peer reviewers that is in line with the journal’s peer review policy.
• Comply with data protection regulations (including GDPR) and ensure all user data is kept secure.
• Verify the contact details of reviewers suggested by authors or other third parties.
• Develop and maintain a consistent and fair policy around returning, rejecting, and withdrawing papers.
• Aim to provide a positive experience for all prospective authors, regardless of peer review decisions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a host of exciting opportunities for researchers to enhance their work. However, you should be aware of the limits of its permitted use.

AI is still relatively new, and additional applications for research are continually being developed. It means that guidelines for the use of AI in research are still evolving, too. Please read our guidance on using AI tools in your research and manuscript preparation.

You should not submit manuscripts where generative AI tools have been used in ways that replace core researcher and author responsibilities, for example:

• Text or code generation without rigorous revision.
• Synthetic data generation to substitute missing data without a robust methodology.
• Generation of content that is inaccurate, including references, abstracts, or supplemental materials.
• Creation or manipulation of research or testing outputs, such as research results, clinical samples, and diagnostic images.

There is a clear distinction between a withdrawal (for unpublished manuscripts) and a retraction (for published articles). Once an article is published, it cannot be withdrawn.

If serious issues are found, the article can only be formally retracted, with a retraction notice published and the article clearly marked as retracted, while remaining in the scholarly record for transparency.

Withdrawing a manuscript after it has entered the review process without a justifiable reason is considered unethical and is against the integrity of the scholarly record. The author or the editor may initiate withdrawal.

Author-Initiated: The authors may request withdrawal if they identify serious errors in the manuscript before publication or if the manuscript was submitted in error.

Editor-Initiated: An editor can withdraw a manuscript if ethical issues are detected, such as plagiarism, duplicate submission to another journal, or fraudulent data.

Formal Request: The corresponding author must submit a formal, written request to the editorial office, clearly explaining the reason for the withdrawal.

Author Signatures: The withdrawal request letter is usually required to be signed by all authors to confirm their agreement.

Editorial Approval: Withdrawal requests are subject to review and approval by the editor or editorial board, especially if the manuscript has already entered the peer-review process.

No Withdrawal After a Certain Point: Once a manuscript has passed peer review or been accepted, it cannot be withdrawn.

Financial Implications: JID allows authors to withdraw their manuscripts without any penalty or fee. Authors are requested not to withdraw their paper after it is reviewed and accepted.

No Fee for Withdrawal.

JID is an open-access journal.

• For articles, there will be double anonymous review by two anonymous external domain experts, as is the norm for a double-anonymized peer-reviewed journal.
• There will be a single anonymous review with at least one policy practitioner or domain expert for policy briefs.
• Only editorial review will be done for Book Reviews and Commentaries, but these may also be sent for external advice, if necessary.
• The authors are not permitted to recommend peer reviewers.

Plagiarism applies to data, images, words, or ideas taken from any materials in electronic or print formats without sufficient attribution. Plagiarism can include abstracts, seminar presentations, laboratory reports, theses or dissertations, research proposals, computer programs, online posts, grey literature, and published or unpublished manuscripts.

The use of any such material, either directly or indirectly, should be properly acknowledged in all instances, and the original source of content must always be cited.

Although authors are expected to refer to their own previously published work, reusing large portions is considered unacceptable in some cases. Where this is unavoidable, authors must be transparent about their prior publications by providing appropriate citations.

Authors must also ensure that reuse complies with copyright policies.

The Journal of Inclusive Development makes the following commitments:

• Limited Access: Personal information is only accessible to authorized editorial staff, reviewers, and system administrators on a need-to-know basis.
• No Unauthorized Sharing: Personal data will not be sold, shared, or given to any unrelated third parties for commercial or marketing purposes.

The specific, legitimate purposes for which your data is processed are given below.

• Managing the manuscript submission, peer review, and editorial decision processes.
• Communicating with authors, reviewers, and editors regarding submissions, decisions, and journal updates.
• Publishing article metadata (such as author names and affiliations) as part of the permanent scholarly record.

Unethical research: Where research outside the approved ethics protocols has been conducted.

For example, where necessary permissions have not been obtained, or where researchers have not taken sufficient steps to protect the safety and privacy of human subjects.

Malpractices can take many forms, of which the two common malpractices are:

• Citation Manipulation
• Peer Review Manipulation

Citation manipulation is where authors excessively or inappropriately self-cite or enter into prearrangements among researcher or reviewer groups to cite each other’s work inappropriately.

Citation manipulation may include the following behaviours:

• Coercive citation: where journal Editorial team members coerce or require authors to cite papers from their own previously published articles, or from specific journals (including their own), or specific author groups, without due scholarly justification or relevance, often as a condition of acceptance.
• Citation stacking: where peer reviewers use their review reports on articles, or journal Editorial team members use decision letters to authors, to increase their own or specific colleagues’ citations, or citations to their journals, by requesting authors cite articles without due scholarly justification or relevance.
• Excessive self-citation: authors citing their own articles without due scholarly justification or relevance.
• Citation farming: where potentially irrelevant citations, or citations the authors cannot justify, are included in the article at request, for a fee, or other benefit.
• Over-citation: where multiple, unnecessary citations are added to support claims in an article, which would only require the most relevant and timely sources to be cited.
• Mis-citation: where articles are inaccurately cited, leading to misattribution.
• Where citation manipulation is suspected or detected, it will be subject to an investigation. Where this behaviour is identified, unpublished articles may be rejected, or if published, may be subject to a post-publication notice, such as retraction.

Where authors take deliberate steps to influence the peer review process in their favor, or where editors make decisions based on biased peer review reports.

Where there is evidence to suggest that the integrity of the peer review process has been compromised, necessary action will be taken to correct the scholarly record.

VoR is the final, definitive, citable version of the paper, which has been copyedited, typeset, had metadata applied to it, and assigned a DOI (Digital Object Identifier).

The VoR includes:

• The article, revised and accepted following peer review, in its final form, including the abstract, text, references, bibliography, and all accompanying tables, illustrations, and data.
• Any supplemental material.

Recognizing a published article as the VoR helps to provide further assurance that it is accurate, complete, and citable.